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St. Patrick's Day Kids' Crafts - Irish Snakes

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published on June 13, 2013

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WhatToExpect.com supports Word of Mom as a place to share stories and highlight the many perspectives and experiences of pregnancy and parenting. However, the opinions expressed in this section are those of individual writers and do not reflect the views of Heidi Murkoff of the What to Expect brand.

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We're probably not going to go too crazy with the St. Patrick's Day kids' crafts, mainly because Jayman and Missy have no idea what St. Patrick's Day is about, anyway. But I did have a few fun St. Patrick's Day craft ideas, including one that will hopefully be a little educational as well. Today we sat down for some fun and very simple St. Patrick's Day kids' crafts all about snakes.

I remember learning sometime in my past about the origin of St. Patrick's Day. Along with the history of St. Patrick himself and his heroic deeds as a Christian missionary, I remember the legend that he supposedly chased all the snakes off the island of Ireland.

Now, as we did our St. Patrick's Day kids' crafts, I did a little research online and discovered that the snake story is merely allegorical. There are no snakes in Ireland, probably because it's too cold and it's surrounded by water that prevents migration. Some scholars think that the legend of the banished "snakes" probably has more to do with the evil that St. Patrick labored so hard to banish from his flock.

In any case, I thought it would be fun for our St. Patrick's Day kids' crafts to make some Irish snakes as pencil toppers. This is definitely one of the simpler St. Patrick's Day craft ideas – all we needed were pipe cleaners, googly eyes, cardstock, beads and hot glue.

To begin these St. Patrick's Day kids' crafts, we bent one end of the pipe cleaners into a small loop. Then, using a pencil as a guide, we twisted the rest of the pipe cleaner down the length of the pencil. At the end of the pipe cleaner, we glued several beads to resemble the rattle on a snake. Finally, Mama glued googly eyes and a small y-shaped tongue made out of cardstock onto the snake's head.

Jayman and Missy loved their snakes. We talked a little bit about the origin of St. Patrick's Day and the legend of his chasing the snakes away from Ireland. Jayman, especially, seemed interested in the history of the holiday.

I found myself interested as well. So many of our mainstream St. Patrick's Day events and traditions seem to have little to do with St. Patrick himself. In researching the background for these simple St. Patrick's Day kids' crafts, I learned more about the origin of St. Patrick's Day than I think I've ever known. I'll definitely be talking more with my babies about the upcoming holiday as it approaches.

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